


Surviving Dawn

by Raccoonfg



Series: Four Nights of Frights [1]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen, Horror, Prison, Survival, Survival Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 06:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16424354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raccoonfg/pseuds/Raccoonfg
Summary: Locked away in a cold, dark cell, Dawn Bellwether struggles to survive in a savage hell.





	Surviving Dawn

Suck on a button.

Just suck on a button.

Suck. Suck. Suck.

Suck.

Suck.

‘This sucks.’

Curled under her bedsheets, Dawn stewed alone as she rubbed and grated the small, round piece of plastic against the roof of her mouth, wearing the moist skin behind her dental plate raw while she drew in what little dregs of saliva that she had left in her. It had begun to feel so tender and sore that she was fairly certain that what she was drinking now was more blood than spit.

It almost made her want to laugh in spite; the very idea that she was now reduced to a blood-sucker.

But she had to remain quiet. For her own sake.

So she sat there, hidden, sucking her button.

Suck. Suck.

‘I really miss Avian Water…’

Honestly, what she missed more was when she still had some remaining supply of water left in her toilet bowl. The chilly, stainless steel throne had gone bone dry two days ago, with the last drops carefully sopped up by her torn off sleeve and hungrily slurped like a slice of lime in a tequila-drunk co-ed’s mouth. She should have savored it back then, but Dawn had already suffered through two prior days of nerve-wracking thirst as she painstakingly rationed out every last inch of “eau de toilette”.

And when the final bit was dried from each and every thread, she had turned to her button and sucked, while the torn sleeve was tucked away for tomorrow’s “dinner”.

“When lost in the woods, you can stave off hunger by chewing on a piece of rubber or cloth.”

Who knew that all those years with the Little Daisy Guides would pay off at a time like this?

Having her fill of button soup, Dawn spat it out into her hoof and tucked it away in the neckline of her jumpsuit where her sleeve sandwich was already nestled away for the next bout of stomach cramps.

But it wasn’t too long before the thought of food began to creep up in her mind.

‘Where are all the bugs?’

Her modest little home of concrete and iron used to pay daily welcome to all sorts of cockroaches and spiders. It was such a constant nuisance when she was first locked up in here, having to deal with just about any kind of creepy-crawly that was eager to slip into the gaps of her wool as she slept. But now her cell felt so devoid of life without them.

Far less lively than what was beyond her iron bars. That’s for sure.

‘Is it possible? Have they already begun to--’

A faint hum of thin, buzzing wings interrupted that thought, alerting Dawn to the one last pest that she unfortunately could still rely on to visit.

The pesky, irritating noise ebbed and flowed from left to right, getting closer and closer as she waited and relaxed her grip on the bedsheets, poising her cloth-wrapped hooves to strike.

Maybe it had smelled the weeks-old stink on her wool, or maybe it was the fresh blood on her button that drew it in; either reason really wasn’t all that important to her right now. As soon as she saw the hazy little speck of movement over in front of her face, she slapped her hooves together in a muffled clap, and the buzzing ceased immediately.

Feeling a relaxed sense of triumph, Dawn opened her grasp and confirmed the dark splotch smeared on her covered palm. The lack of any redness mixed in with the crushed mosquito calmed her even more so, but she knew deep down that it didn’t matter if it was there or not. She couldn’t have taken any chances.

Ages ago, she would have turned up her nose at the offer of a bugburga sandwich, or any sort of insect meat meal for that matter. It would have made her gag, retch, or angrily dismiss it as “pred slop” and throw it away. So the fact that she was now salivating over just the tiniest morsel of bug meat in front of her, let alone think so wistfully of all the now absent multi-legged creatures of her confines, it proved to herself just how far gone she had become in her earnest hunger.

Just a lick - a little taste of this smudged stain of a bug - seemed like enough to carry her through the day.

But she couldn’t take any chances, so she begrudgingly wiped it away on the rough concrete wall beside her and retreated back into the safety of her sheets.

‘God damn you, Doug.’

She couldn’t deny it any longer now. Her situation had grown even worse than she had realized.

Out of food. Out of water. She had thought that it was only a matter of waiting it out; being among the last standing when help finally arrived. But it was clear to her now that she was on the losing end of this war of attrition. If the bugs were disappearing, then that meant that she wasn’t waiting _them_ out, _they_ were waiting _her_ out.

And there was no way she would last long enough at this rate.

As risky as it may be, escape was the only option that remained.

Carefully slipping out of her sheets and onto the floor, Dawn reached under her cot and pulled out a long, improvised rope made up of strips of cloth ripped from her former pillow. The end of it was weighted with a bar of soap she had once smuggled from the showers, back when things were normal and safer, less suicidal, escape plans were still possible.

Back before all this chaos broke out. Before her former partner made rash decisions on how to survive in this place.

After loosely looping the rope and slipping it over her shoulder, Dawn gave her chest a pat-down to make sure nothing was forgotten.

Chewing cloth.

Sucking button.

And key.

The most important part. There wouldn’t be the barest idea of escape without it, after all.

It must have been fate or some kind of wild stroke of luck that he had collapsed in a bloody mess by her cell door that day. So close, yet so far; that little piece of jagged metal had mocked her for days as she slowly and quietly ripped her pillow to shreds, fashioning the rope so she could catch and drag the sweet token of freedom into her eager grasp.

She could remember the elation of holding the key in her hooves for the first time. So cold and listless to the touch, and yet something that filled her heart with warmth and hope. It became a nightly ritual to hold it to the moonlight each evening before she went to sleep, to remind her that there was still a way out; that her struggle was worth it.

It had to be worth it. The light jangling noise that key had made on its way to her cell was more than enough to catch the ear of _them_.

The first time she held that key? That happy moment? She preferred to forget it, but it had been cut short by the growing noise of padding on the floor; of panting breath in the air; of dripping saliva on the walkway; of their arrival.

Dawn had barely retreated within the safety of her bed when the snapping mouths were pressing through the bars, reminding her that no matter what the situation was, she was still locked up and trapped away under their constant watch.

Under their hunger.

That was weeks ago and she could only hope that at least half of them had turned on the other before they had resorted to bugs for their prey.

She could only hope.

Giving one last check of the cloth wrappings on her hooves to make sure they were sufficiently muffled, Dawn took a deep breath and crept the furthest she had ever been from her bedside in a week, making her way towards the barred door.

With every closing step towards the dangerous gaps between her cell and the outside, her heart rate paced faster and faster. If she didn’t know any better, she could swear that the baubles tucked in the breast of her jumpsuit were rattling like a snake’s tail. The trembling apprehension swelled inside her as she sidled up against the cold metal, causing her hoof to shake and waver uncontrollably while she slipped it under her zipper to retrieve the key.

‘You can do this,’ she thought to herself in words fragmented by visions of the teeth and claws that laid in waiting beyond the shadows. ‘You just need to calm down. You just need…’

Feeling the familiar, wet item beside the key, Dawn knew exactly what she needed to calm her nerves right now, so she removed both, and held them to the moonlight that cascaded down from the high window of her cell.

‘I knew it.’

There were flecks of blood on it after all, giving the white button the strange appearance of a flat, bloodshot eyeball. She didn’t waste much time in popping it back into her mouth, resuming the ingrained habit of sucking away on it like a plastic teat.

It tasted of iron now. She wasn’t sure if it was from being in close contact with the key, or because she was now more aware of the blood washed in with it, but she didn’t have any time to reflect on a changing pallet; when morning comes, escape would be impossible in the sunlight.

With her standing up on the very tips of her forked toes, Dawn had snaked her thin arm around the bars in an effort to work the key into a slot that she could barely see from her angle. It took what felt like ages for her to finally feel the key slip into its hole, and it was even longer before she could manage to twist it around to hear that one, hollow, beautiful click for the lock snapping open. Her shoulder felt inflamed with the pain of near dislocation, and the noise the lock’s bolt had made may have alerted anyone nearby, but it was all worth it in her mind.

As far as she was concerned in this moment, she was already halfway to freedom.

One thing that she never knew that she took for granted was being able to open a door without a care in the world. The slow, minuscule pace of her edging the door open bit by bit was an eternity in its own, but the monotony of gradually dragging it across the floor was nonnegotiable. Not unless if she wanted to announce her presence to the entire wing with the grinding whine of metal.

When it was wide enough, she squeezed herself through the gap and into the hallway, feeling a rush of exhilaration at the sudden increase in breathing room. Instinctively, she took a deep breath to take in the fresh air, but found herself immediately gagging at the pungent odor that filled the corridor.

It didn’t seem to have drifted into her cell this entire time, but the late guest at her doorstep had long gone into the advanced stages of decay, giving off a putrid stench.

‘I guess that’s why they stopped looking for me…’

While her cell was illuminated from outside, the halls were shrouded in a darkness of black and blue, mixing together like oil on the water’s surface. And because of this, she was spared the fullest view of what remained of the former guard. Only a silhouette, a ghost of his carcass, stood out in the shadows, painting a twisted picture of a warthog spread out on his back; jagged pieces of flesh and bone jutting out at odd angles, marking obscured suggestions about his demise.

In daylight, it would have been a sight to disturb any mammal. But in the nightfall, the only thing Dawn found unnerving about it was how little she could recognize it as a person anymore, or care to remember what his name used to be.

Turning away from it, she looked down the hallway, toward the exit to the common room. The path ahead of her seemed to continue onward like a bottomless pit, with the door on the other end absent in the formless darkness. The way it just continued on and on into nothingness, with only the straight rows of faintly lit prison bars lining the descent into oblivion like an unending series of teeth, Dawn had the unsettling feeling of being welcomed into the hungry maw of a creature far greater than anything she could possibly imagine.

And so, with careful step by careful step, the weak little prey tip-toed deep into the mouth of the unknown.

The hall was still and quiet, but she knew that meant little when it came to those that still freely prowled the corridors. They only made sounds when excited or enraged, not when they were hunting and searching. Only sight would be her tool in this place, so she had to keep her wits about her at all times as she stalked along the other cells and watched out for movement in the shadows.

If the other convicts were still alive or normal, she had no idea. Dawn never talked to anyone since things went all pear-shaped and any cries for help or absent chatter from afar was slowly snuffed out with each passing day. If she took the time to stop and glance at the contents of the cells she was passing by, perhaps she could have spied the odd shifting shape, the occasional pair of glimmering eyes, and the hinted glint of licked teeth. The temptation was there, but she knew that looking would only end in them snarling, gnashing, and thrusting against the bars at the piece of emaciated lamb that trembled before them. Their attempts would be for nothing, but _them_ , the prowlers, would enjoy the spoils of an exposed prey.

‘All of this, for money.’

She had seen the late night dramas, the special interest documentaries, the news reports. There wasn’t any secret that when she was fitted with an orange jumpsuit and given a number, she’d have to find desperate ways to survive. But she didn’t figure that a long time criminal like Doug would have sunk to the lowest of the low the very moment he was inside.

It was probably her own fault for not seeing it coming. After all, he was proficient with a gun and had an extensive understanding of chemistry; slinging junk in prison must’ve been like a trip down memory lane for a crook like him. And cutting his product with something else, even _that_ , must’ve been a bad old habit that he never shook.

It was in his blood.

And now, it was in theirs.

The stink of death became more present and numerous as Dawn continued her cautious stride down the corridor. It was as if the very building itself was festering away, like a tooth succumbing to rot. All she could do to press on was to take out her chewing cloth and clasp it to her snout like a makeshift mask. But like the button, it only helped her ignore the issue. The smell was still there.

Eventually, after what felt like miles of blind marching through a moldy tunnel, the sight of a doorway melted into view. The entrance to the common room stood ajar, with a sliver of pale light spilling out from it, giving her all the welcome that she needed to scamper inside, thanking her good fortune that she didn’t run into any of the prowlers as she softly closed the door behind her.

The cavernous room was better lit than the halls, thanks to the long rows of barred windows that bordered the area. It smelled a whole lot better too. The prison had gone into complete lockdown when the shit had hit the fan, so there wouldn’t have been many animals lounging around the cafeteria tables or TV spaces.

The odd streak of blood, however…

It painted a grim picture - a roadmap of the chaos - showing just where any guards or prisoners must’ve been when they were attacked. Where they ran. What chairs they tripped over, or maybe tossed around, as they fled in panic. But none of it seemed to be the place where they had finally died. The room was completely devoid of corpses.

‘I wonder which one was his,’ Dawn pondered, glancing over a few trails of splattered blood dotted along the linoleum tiling, thinking of the key’s previous owner.

Shuffling about, she stepped over and around the serpentine patterns of red footprints; paws and hooves that zig-zagged here and there like a guide map to a macabre dance step. And at the end of the ichor cha-cha, she found herself staring up at a set of double doors.

She didn’t expect it to be this easy, but here she was, at the halfway point to freedom. The doorway past here led to the outdoor activity area, which was a direct path to the front gate. It was silly to think that it was as simple as walking right out the gate, but it was. Especially for her.

Back when she was the assistant mayor, she had done a PR tour of the prison; something that the warden and the guards endlessly teased her over when the day came that the ZPD locked her away in here. And this gave her a great deal of information on how the place ticked. Most of it the warden accounted for; changing guard details and adding new security cameras. But some things couldn’t be changed, like how the fire and safety bylaws require a manual backup lock for the front gate, in the event of a power outage. Since something cut the power to the prison days ago - most likely one of them chewing the lines out of mindless curiosity - the electric lock on the gate was dead and all she would have to do is lasso the manual lock, pop the bolts, and sneak right out.

Sometimes it really paid off that Lionheart shirked most of his responsibilities on her.

But as she raised a weak hoof to the low-rung push-bar on the door, a stabbing pain struck her in the gut, churning up her insides. This had been the most she had physically exerted herself in days, and a gas tank running on fumes doesn’t get very far.

She was so close and just had to hold on a little bit longer.

And yet…

‘We don’t have time for this,’ Dawn scolded herself as she roughly tongued her button to the sore spot of her mouth.

And yet, it was right there, just a little bit off in the distance to the right, mocking her from behind a stainless steel counter, the entrance to the kitchen and its promise of all the food she had been denied for so very long.

There was no hope for the fridges or freezers, and the water had stopped running in her toilet, so it was only safe to assume the faucets were dry in there as well. But it had cereals. Crackers. Bread. Canned food. Maybe even canned and bottled drinks; she never saw them on her tour, but the staff vending machines had to be restocked from somewhere. And it was all there for the taking. Right now. All she had to do was waltz through that open door on her right and help herself to a long deserved feast of rice cakes and tinned beans.

She had already come this far, what could a little detour hurt? The door to the common room was already closed behind her, so there was no way of the prowlers wandering in while she indulged in a light snack for the road. After days, and days, and days, and days of nothing but buttons and cloth to keep her going, she deserved this. Right?

Right?

‘Goddamn it…’

A second twisting ache in her stomach made the choice for her. She had no idea how much further she could get before her body would give up on her. If she left her cell the avoid starving to death, she might as well have something to show for it.

All she had to do was be careful. Same as always.

As methodically slow as she was moving before to avoid noise, the short walk to the kitchen seemed so much worse, with this awareness of her neglected hunger spreading throughout her body, sending her muscles into atrophy. Her hooves pulled towards the ground like lead magnets, making each step a labor in itself. Even the filthy glasses that sat on the end of her snout felt like cinderblocks. The last time she ever felt this suddenly drained and exhausted was when Lionheart made her take his place in the Zootopia Marathon. All twenty-five miles of it. And somehow this felt far, far worse.

It was lucky for her that the kitchen door was already slightly ajar; she didn’t think she’d have the strength in her to open it herself.

More moonlight spilled into the cooking area, illuminating the room in a dim silver hue. Some pots, pans, and utensils laid scattered about the countertops; signs of cooking and cleaning duties left undone. But no blood. At least, not that she could see from her end. The room was broken up by several island counters - made for ease of access to the prison’s former kitchen staff - which made it difficult to see much of the other end where a series of walk-in freezer doors lined the wall.

Just as she thought, the refrigeration units had gone still, leaving a deathly quiet in the room that was alien to her memories of that past tour of the facility. The hum of compressors, the droning of stove hoods, and the clattering and murmuring of busy staff - all gone, leaving a void in this cold, clean metal room.

‘Did any of them get out?’ Dawn wondered. But it couldn’t have been likely.

After all, if they did, they would have sent help.

Wouldn’t they?

The matters of who lived and who died or why she’d been abandoned for so long were only of fleeting importance as a third, and even more painful, spasm struck her stomach, causing her to stumble in agony against a tepid fridge. She needed to eat something. Now.

Fruits and vegetables were off the menu - at least fresh ones - and she knew there wasn’t any hope to hold onto for that long-awaited pint of chocolate soy ice cream that she dreamt about each night. A row of floor-level cabinets ran along the island next to her, so she started there, going through the preserves and dried goods.

A can of peaches would be nice, or peas, or really anything that could be canned and ready to serve. But given how lethargic she was at this time, Dawn wasn’t sure if she had the strength to work a can-opener, let alone the patience to search the rest of the kitchen for one.

It didn’t matter anyway. To her disappointment, all she was finding was basic ingredients; flour, cornstarch, baking soda, salt, oats--

Oats?!

A goddamned marvelous feast in a tin, more like!

Snatching it from the dark cabinet’s recess, Dawn clutched the beautiful mustard-yellow tin to her tiny, quivering body. Oats! She had oats! Lovely, flaky, dry old oats. Oh, Dawn could barely contain herself as she wildly wrenched her hooves around the stubborn lid, flicking and clicking her button against her teeth, thinking of how sweet it would be to shovel every last grain into her salivating mouth.

And then she heard it, and it gave her pause.

A gentle, wispy buzz, floating from ear to ear.

‘Not now.’

The wool on her back clenched up in knots and her ears fluttered uncontrollably in irritation.

‘Not now.’

She had survived for so long and come so far; she couldn’t let it end like this. To end up like _them_. She had made it past all that happened, from the “mysterious epidemic” caused by Doug’s cocktail flowing through the veins of the prison’s users, to the outbreak that thrived in the unseasonably humid summer that brought these little blood-sucking gnats into their midst, carrying poison from person to person, and through the fallout that left this place the rotting, blood-soaked mess she needed to escape from.

This prison.

This hell.

‘Not now!’

Irrational from hunger, Dawn freed one of her hooves from the can and swung about madly at the air around her, warding off the persistent little needle-nosed vampire. But with each swipe the buzzing continued to circle about her, threatening a landing at any moment.

Not here.

Not like this.

‘Not like this!’

With one more fierce swing of her arm, Dawn lashed out at the unseen menace, hoping to cast it away for good.

But she wasn’t thinking clearly.

She had used the other arm.

The tinned oats were sent soaring through the air; smashing against a steel cabinet at the end of the aisle, where it spilled its contents about in a loud, metallic rattle.

With her jaw hanging open in shock, Dawn’s heart stopped as the tin rolled about, echoing the cacophony with a soft wobble.

Not only did she just risk her life for oats - goddamn oats - but now she had also forfeited it for them. Everything in the damn complex must’ve heard her. It was amazing that the entire wing she came from hadn’t exploded into howling for her neck.

Maybe they were all dead after all.

Forgetting the mosquito and trying to put behind her the urge to break down crying, Dawn crept over to the teetering can, where she stooped down, ceased its rocking with a light touch, and scooped up a hoof-full of spilled oats that she reluctantly crammed in her mouth.

They were flavorless and awful.

And yet, with the button tucked against her inner cheek, she choked back the dry, sticky grains, and dived down for another scoop.

But on her second dip, she noticed something from the corner of her eye, just around the edge of the island counter, in the next aisle.

Laying there in the evening spotlight, almost completely picked clean, baring a murky, off-white surface, it looked back at Dawn with its hollow, black, lifeless sockets and spoke a clear warning for her.

She didn’t find the doorways leading here to be open because of pure luck.

It was because she had stumbled on their lair.

The loose bundle of oats slipped through the cracks of her hoof and tumbled onto the ground as she started to hear something stirring from the far end of the kitchen.

It didn’t take much more than a few light yawns and the curt sniffling of noses catching a scent to drive Dawn into flinging aside what grains remained in her palm while she bolted against the closest counter, hiding herself away from the open view of the aisle.

From her hiding spot, she could hear the quickly multiplying sounds of paws padding along the smooth tiles, bringing with them the wet smacking of jowls and the soft, pained whines of starving hunters salivating for some fresh prey.

Everything in her beating heart said to run, but she was frozen in her place, pressed against the chilly, metal cabinet door, too terrified to risk her neck any more than she already had.

And then, looking in front of her, she could see a growing mass in the reflection of the fridge’s chrome face. As it got bigger, details started to take form like the distorted image in a funhouse mirror.

It lumbered towards her on four long, bow-legged limbs as its head hung low and slowly swung from side to side, scanning the path in front of it. A peaked hat sat askew on its scalp, and tattered blue rags draped over its hunched shoulders, with a single black, coiled line dangling by its wayside, dragging along a small black plastic box that rattled about as it trailed behind it like a child’s toy on a string.

And the face.

Its face…

The jaw was slacked open, with a long flat tongue lolling out the side over its sharp, bared teeth. Saliva flowed freely from its maw, dripping small puddles in its wake. And its eyes-- Dim. Cold. Unfeeling. Unblinking. Without any spark of intellect behind its cruel, glassy marbles.

It was a mockery of an animal.

And it was coming right for her.

Fear gave fleet to foot and Dawn broke away from her hiding spot, running down the aisle and skidding around the corner of the counter, where she braced herself against its side. As her chest heaved with every labored breath she took, she peaked back around the counter’s edge and saw a long, panting muzzle stretch into view, sniffing down at the discarded tin of oats.

Pulling herself away from view, she glanced around to the other side, shocking herself with the brief sight of a tail disappearing around the next aisle over from her. Just in time to avoid the second prowler’s attention, but late enough to have put herself into a cornered spot. Whatever the number was in their pack, the lot of them were weaving through the rows, combing the kitchen for her, and it was only a matter of time before she would be found.

Dawn’s mind raced for options while her tongue wildly flicked the button around in her mouth. None of the cupboards would do; even if she had the time to find one empty enough to slip inside, the others would trace her scent and then she’d be trapped in there. It would be a cruel end for her to discard her cell for someplace even smaller to die.

Just getting the hell out of the kitchen and leaving out the main door was the more obvious choice, but with the ground they were already covering, there’d be no way she’d be able to make a break for the exit without one of them already being within pouncing distance.

‘No, no…’ Dawn shook her head, trying to jumble her fragmented thoughts into something workable. ‘I need to get them away from me first.’

She could almost hear them getting closer now, quickening her pulse.

‘Think, think, think!’

As she wracked her brain for something - anything - Dawn continued to fitfully toy with her button, scraping it against her cheeks.

‘I need a head start. I need a distraction. I need--’

The tongue in her mouth stopped dead with a sudden realization.

She had exactly what she needed to get herself out of this tight spot.

Taking one more look towards the still open kitchen entrance, Dawn pressed the button to the front of her mouth, and gave it one last good suck, collecting as much spit as she could. Then she turned away, looking off to the end of the kitchen where the hunters had been sleeping, took a deep breath, and spat as hard as she could, launching her little plastic companion across the room in a glimmering arc of saliva.

Where it landed, she could not see, but the light clatter of it bouncing off of metal gave her hope that it went far enough.

The moment of deafening silence that followed was immeasurable, putting her entire body on edge while she stood there, waiting for a reaction.

And then it came. The whole lot of them all started huffing and snorting in confusion and were soon heard tapping their nails on the linoleum as they stalked off to the new disruption and away from her position.

She got the chance that she needed and Dawn didn’t waste another second as she immediately fled towards the entrance, swearing that she’d never eat oats again, for as long as she would live.

Closing in on the doorway, all that was left to do was to slam it shut and trap the pack of savages behind her; simple as that.

But as she skidded around and pressed her hooves against the door, a deep, guttural snarling erupted, and from the crack of the entrance a large, dark, hairy snout stabbed out from the shadows with its moist lips curled back, exposing a set of long jagged teeth that snapped and gnashed at the air between them while the rest of its wretched mass heaved roughly against Dawn’s make-shift barricade.

She barely had a chance to react before the frothing beast barged its way through, hurling her to the floor. Giving only the briefest glance up at the slobbering, wild-eyed animal, Dawn clambered away, fleeing as quickly as she could in a haphazard scramble of hands and feet. From behind her, she could already feel the hot, musky breath of her pursuer and hear the distant barks and howls of its friends joining the hunt.

Running like the devil was on her tail, she dove beneath a dining table, buying her mere seconds while the crazed monster struggled to crawl after her. And as she continued to race towards the exit, the noise of claws scraping against the floor scraped ever closer.

A stack of chairs was spotted in her path, so Dawn topped them over, strewing them about the floor. Only inches behind her and starving for meat, the pack of berserk predators heedlessly crashed into the makeshift caltrops. Their frenzied momentum sent them tumbling onto their backs; tangling them up in a mess of fur, metal, and plastic.

‘Almost home free!’

The exit to the outside rushed towards her as she bounded forwards. Her lungs stung, with each breath taken feeling like a gust of fire. The muscles of her body were giving all that they can, but she could feel the tendons and sinew grow taut to the point that they could snap at any moment. This was her last run, for good or bad.

With one last step, she threw her body against the door’s push-bar, forcing it open. A rush of fresh air hit her nostrils, giving her a second wind that allowed Dawn to snake her body around the open gap and close the door with a hasty shove.

But her pushing was met with resistance, as a round, wet, black nose poked through the narrow slit while its owner bayed unintelligibly and lashed its moist pink tongue at her, flinging warm spittle on her face.

“Fucking preds!”

Putting all her weight into her shoulder, Dawn gave a good, hard, final thrust and smashed the door shut, crushing the snout caught in the middle and sending the predator reeling back with an agonized yowl, sealing away the lot of them for good.

In her triumph, Dawn’s legs gave away from below and she sunk to the ground, limply leaning by the door’s surface in a tired heap. Her lungs were still aflame, but that did little to stop her from panting raggedly while she regathered her strength.

And though she was finally free of them, the barking and howling echoed in her head, filling her ears with a cacophony of snarling, growling, yapping, and--

Braying?

Hissing?

Bleating?

Wide-eyed, Dawn roughly slid her way back on her feet and looked at the courtyard before her.

The noises weren’t in her head.

Not at all.

They were coming from all around her.

“Holy shit…”

There were, unfortunately, some facts she had forgotten from her past tour of the prison and one of them was their riot prevention measures. Namely, soundproofing the outside from the inside.

There was some sort of social study that the warden had rambled on about, which she didn’t bother to pay much attention to at the time. Something about how if any noise and unrest caused by inmates, on either the inside or outside, was heard by the other side, the disruption would spread to there as well, regardless of understanding or context. So to reduce risk of rioting, they made either end virtually silent from the other.

So it was little wonder why she never knew to expect this kind of madness.

Their silhouettes lined the horizon like a living mountain range, amorphously milling and shifting around while their primitive cries filled the air. And through this sea of blackness, she saw several twinkling eyes, reflecting the moonlight like a sky of loathsome stars that all peered back at her.

And as she stood there, frozen in place, transfixed by the inescapable wall of doom, a faint rattling of metal touched her ear. It didn’t register as much at first, but as it started to multiply under the omnipresent clamor, Dawn’s haggard mind figured it out.

‘The fences.’

The courtyard was sectioned off into fenced activity areas; all to separate the minimum security, maximum security and general population prisoners from each other, for their own safety. And now they were packed away in their own sequestered herds of savages, lusting for the blood of a lamb that none of them could reach.

Slowly taking her first step forward, Dawn could only laugh bitterly at her own misplaced fears. There was nothing left to worry about. All that remained in her path was a simple walk past her friendly colleagues.

In the distance stood the arches of the prison’s gate, haloed in the evening’s glow, and it made her smile.

Dragging herself into the thick of it, Dawn cautiously looked between the boxed cages while the savages battered roughly against the chain-linked walls.

It had seemed that the outbreak spared little and discriminated against none, as among the hunched figures of various preds there were also the long-necked visages of giraffes, the hulking frames of rhinos, and the sleek figures of deer.

Preds and prey, together in savagery.

It truly was madness.

And yet, there was something naggingly familiar about it all. Like an old song she forgot the name of, but could still hum the tune.

What was it?

‘Ah,’ Dawn nodded to herself with the lightest hint of a smile on her face. ‘Of course.’

The recovered memory brought back with it the rich mildewy smell of that old book and its yellowed pages, but the title was still a haze.

It was a pulp science fiction story she read when she was young, about a future where predators had oppressed prey to the point of near extinction and preserved what was left of her kind in cages that they put on public display for the amusement of the ruling species.

The written image of it had long haunted her as a little ewe, giving her nightmares.

To a point, you could say it was a formative experience.

Walking under the gaze of a giraffe that had its neck caught in the barbed wire that lined the cage’s top, Dawn furrowed her brow as she wondered aloud, “What did the writer call it?”

The giraffe only replied with a low, droning, prolonged grunt while blood trickled down its slender neck from the fresh wound worn below its jaw.

A pair of hyenas cackled at her while they raked their teeth against the mesh, goggling their blank rolling eyes at the sheep that impassively strolled by, lost in frivolous thought about the book’s title.

She didn’t need to remember it, but the distraction was certainly welcome in this situation.

‘Now then…’

It was something unusual.

But simple.

Almost childishly so.

‘Like a sound,’ she thought and started to quietly form noises through her pursed lips. “Suh… Suh… Suu… Su--”

Suddenly, the blaring cry of a trumpet burst through the wave of chittering, managing to scare Dawn enough to send her tripping backwards with her glasses tilting askew on her face. The fencing in front of her rattled as it bulged out under the pressing weight of a two-ton elephant ramming its mighty tusks as far as they could through the cage’s diamond gaps.

At first, it gave her a true shock, thinking this would be when the levee would finally break, but after a few fruitless moments of the great grey beast wrestling its ivory with the barrier, to no avail, her fear faded into disappointment. And as she contemptuously watched it wrench itself free from its own ensnarement, something sprung to mind.

The Zoo.

That’s what he called it. And that’s exactly what this hell all around her was; a Zoo.

Except for one thing, the animals in the book still had their wits. Their dignity. These savages… These mammals - if she could still call them that - weren’t even the least bit dignified. Surviving on mammal flesh. Shouting guttural nonsense. Staggering around on all fours.

They weren’t something to be pitied or feared.

They disgusted her.

And the best part?

She didn’t feel the least bit sorry for what happened here.

It was their own fault. It was everyone’s fault. They all rejected her; spurned her plans for a brighter future of prey superiority.

Them and the damned rabbit.

How she wished that among these filthy creatures that there was just one bunny - one hare - that she could single out, spit in its eye and laugh at its stupid, sniveling face.

But she saw none. And judging from the bones scattered among the cages, any that was once there were the first to hit the bottom of the food chain.

The corner of Dawn’s mouth curled up in a cruel sneer.

‘Good enough, I guess.’

And with a determined scowl on her face, Dawn Bellwether marched her way through the pandemonium and towards her freedom.

Let the horses scream their crazed whinnies as they kicked at the fence.

Let the boars squeal and dash themselves upon the grating.

Let all of them cry until their throats bleed and their horns wear away.

Nothing was getting between her and the outside world.

Especially with the best reinforced steel and concrete that money can buy.

And once she finally set her first footstep on the open pavement beyond the cages, all the sound and fury behind her was simply that, behind her, and fading away on a warm breeze that flowed through her wool.

The prison gates loomed tall above her, beckoning the spiteful lamb to throw them open.

Unfurling the jury-rigged rope from her shoulder, she gazed up at the final obstacle; a flat, metal lever that jutted out from the gate’s locking mechanism, several feet above her head.

It took a few tries, but eventually she managed to thread the needle; wrapping the weighted soap-bar end of the rope around the lever and getting a firm hold on it.

Giving it a couple tugs confirmed for her that it needed a little more elbow grease to get the thing to budge, so she gripped the rope in both hooves, turned away from the gate, and leaned forward, pulling it from over her shoulder.

‘Come on… Come on…’

At first, it was like playing tug’o’war with a hippo and getting nowhere, but eventually she could feel it give. Just a little.

‘That’s it… That’s it…’

Leaning onward, Dawn gritted her teeth as she pulled even harder, and was rewarded with yet another small fraction of progress.

Shifting her back leg forward, she put even more tension on the rope, towing the lever with all that she had.

And then suddenly, her grip completely slipped from the rope, sending her stumbling ahead in confusion. She looked down at her hooves and something felt off about them. Was it hunger taking its toll again? The mouthful of oats wasn’t exactly a full-course meal, but she didn’t feel weak at the knees either.

The way they felt as she flexed her pointed fingers was almost arthritic, but after a few more attempts at opening and closing her fists, everything seemed okay.

‘Alright,’ she thought as she recollected the rope and resumed her position, ‘once more, from the top.’

Again, she dragged herself forward, yanking at the stubborn lock, grunting and panting as she edged ahead, inch by inch.

The lever gave a little. And then a little bit more.

And more…

And more…

Until--

“Argh!” Her grasp had spasmed again, letting the rope fly from her hold for half a second before she wrapped her own arms around it, hugging it to her body in a frantic attempt at hanging on. Whatever rebellion her hands were throwing, she wasn’t going to let them get in the way of her freedom as she embraced the rope and continued tugging away.

‘Come on! Come on! Come--’

Her heart stopped and her blood ran cold.

She had hoped it was all in her imagination, but the light echo that remained of it said otherwise.

A weak, strained bleat had trilled through the air, chilling her to the bone.

And what she knew to be worse - as she struggled to bring a trembling, twitching hoof to her mouth - was that it had come from her.

“No… Nonononononononono...”

Tears started to stream down her face as she frantically snared her body around the rope and began to pull at it in fitful bursts.

‘It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. I came so far. It’s not fair. It was only one, and I got it. I got it with the tin. I got it. It was dead and I got it. I got it.’

She could feel her legs start to buckle and wobble below her, making even the effort to stand a battle in itself. And still she fought against it. She stood, she pulled, and she fought.

‘So close. So close. Just a little more. So close soclosesoclosesoclose. So. Close.’

“M-maa~aa!”

The unholy noise retched from her throat, painfully contorting her tear-soaked face while she strained to clamp her jaw down in defiance as the saliva flowed freely from her lips.

‘Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease’

Sniveling, Dawn managed to ball one of her hooves into a fist and awkwardly rubbed it against her cheek, accidentally knocking the glasses from her face and casting the world into a blurry haze.

Choking back another outburst, her hips finally gave out, harshly toppling her to the ground on her hands and knees. She tried to straighten herself back up, but her body only twisted and flopped about cumbersomely in a jerking mess of convulsions.

‘I need to get a grip here. Just calm down and take back control. Just calm down.’

Dawn wrestled herself up from the ground by her hands, but her feet were still grappling with her, uselessly sliding about on the pavement like a newborn’s legs.

‘I need to calm down. I need to calm down. I need- I need-’

Finally planting one foot firmly on the ground, Dawn heard a soft crack and felt her glasses crumble under her hoof. On any other day, she would have cursed her bad luck, but something in her no longer cared - could no longer care.

And even though her other foot slowly dragged itself up, planting her awkwardly on all fours, she was hardly in control of her body anymore, or much of anything at all.

‘I need my button. Where’s my button? I lost itIneeditIneeditIneedit. No no, not like this. Neverlikethisnevernever. My buttonwherewhere? Goddamned Doug. Doug’s faulthisfaulthishis. STUPIDstupidra-ra-bunnystupidstupid. Hate rabbit. HATE.’

Her neck contorted outwards, craning her head to the sky as the vertebrae below it popped violently with the sudden realignment. Scared and confused, her eyes darted left and right, flailing to find a way out of this, but her vision seemed to worsen; becoming distorted and stretched out.

‘Button. Button? Button. Button. But-- But--’

“Baaa~aaa!”

The lamb bleated angrily at the night’s sky; its tongue stabbing out and dripping with hunger. Taking its first steps forward on the pavement, it wobbled and sidestepped a little, trying to make sense of the binding orange cloth that constricted its movements.

Dangling limply by its side was some sort of cloth vine, which the lamb sniffed at and gave a few tugs of with its mouth before spitting it out with a dismissive snort.

Turning away, its green, narrow eyes spotted a vast herd of animals in the horizon, all leering, salivating and tepidly growling at her.

They smelled weird. Like blood. And death.

By instinct, the lamb knew it should be afraid and run away.

But inside, there was a spark.

Small and fading, but a spark, nonetheless.

And it said to the lamb that there was nothing to fear.

So the lamb wandered off into the thick of the snarling, howling, thrashing, drooling chaos that hungered with great agony, and it defiantly bleated at each and every one of them, reminding them that they were the ones trapped in these high walls, not it.

It was free.

It was the only one that was free.

“Baaa~aaa!”

“Baaa~aaa!”

“Baaa~aaa!”


End file.
